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Several different potential responses presented them selves to him, but in the end he decided that, since Carly was so patently thick-skinned, he might as well go for the oldest and least believable of all of them.
So he smiled at her, and then he took hold of her hand and patted it. And then he told her smoothly, 'I shall be delighted to help you. How much do you think you will need?'
She was gazing at him starry-eyed, her face slightly flushed, her lips slightly parted, as though she could hardly believe her good fortune.
Such a heroic effort deserved a generous reward, Ricardo decided cynically.
'Wait! I've had a better idea.' But she, of course, had no doubt already had the same idea before him. 'Why don't we go into St Tropez together tomorrow and you can choose whatever you think you may need?'
For some reason she didn't look as delighted as Ricardo had expected.
Ricardo had made her a wonderful offer, but she was not sure it was one she felt comfortable with, Carly reflected, as she thanked him.
'That's very generous of you.'
'I'm delighted to be able to help,' Ricardo assured her, before adding, 'Come on, let's go inside.'
Carly was used to staying in beautiful and magnificent properties, but the Villa Mimosa was truly breathtaking. Its setting alone—tucked into a hillside, overlooking the Mediterranean—provided a view that must surely al ways catch at the heart.
From the balcony of her bedroom she could look out over immaculate gardens and across a miraculous infinity pool to the horizon, and although it was a couple of hours now since they had arrived at the villa she still kept going to the balcony and gazing at the view.
The middle-aged Frenchwoman who had welcomed them had explained that she was the maid but that she did not live in. Cathy must have looked rather surprised at that, she realized, because after she had left them Ricardo had explained to her that he preferred to have his own personal staff on hand or do without.
'My own people know how I like things done, and they know too that I like my privacy. It's mid-afternoon now, and I have some business matters to attend to,' he had told her, 'so why don't we agree to meet up on the terrace at, say, six? My choice would be for us to eat in,' he had added suavely. 'I can arrange to have some thing delivered.'
Carly had felt her heart miss a couple of beats at the potential implications of dining alone with him.
'That sounds perfect,' she had answered, and then worried when she had seen the gleam in his eyes that she had sounded naively over-enthusiastic.
Six o'clock, he had said. And it was five now. She might not have anything to change in to, but she certainly intended to shower and tidy herself up.
Half an hour later, showered and still wearing the thick toweling robe she had found hanging up in the bath room, she was just brushing her hair when she heard a soft tap on her bedroom door. It opened and Ricardo walked in, carrying two well filled champagne glasses.
'I've mixed you a Bellini. I hope you like them.'
'Oh, yes. Yes, I do,' she agreed.
Unlike her, he was fully dressed, in dark linen trousers and a white linen shirt, his bare brown feet thrust into soft plain leather sandals.
He came over to where she was sitting and put one glass down on the glass-topped dressing table, then held the other out to her.
'Try it first,' he urged her.
Sipping from a glass whilst he held it surely shouldn't be such a sensually intimate experience, should it? And why couldn't she stop looking at the long brown fingers curled round the stem of the glass? She tried to focus on something else, but discovered that the only other thing to focus on was his body, and that the place where the line of his trousers was broken by a telltale bulge was exactly on her eye line. And, what was worse, she couldn't seem to stop herself from gazing appreciatively at it.
'It's lovely,' she assured him hurriedly, taking a sip and then turning away. 'I hadn't realized that was the time. I'd better hurry up and get dressed.'
He gave a small shrug.
'You might as well stay as you are. I hope you like lobster by the way.'
'I love it,' she told him truthfully.
'And I also hope that the gourmet meals-on-wheels outfit who brought the food are as good they are sup posed to be. I thought we'd eat outside on the terrace.'
He was obviously expecting her to go with him, Carly realized. A bathrobe wouldn't normally have been her first choice of dinner outfit, but on this occasion it seemed she had no alternative.
'I really am grateful to you for being so kind about the money,' she told him.
'Good. Maybe later you might find a way of showing me how much, Mmm?'
Ricardo watched cynically as somehow or other she managed to summon a look of shocked bemusement quickly followed by hot excitement into the smoky darkness of her eyes. But his cynicism wasn't stopping him from wanting her, was it? he reminded himself. In fact he had spent the last three hours thinking about very little other than satisfying that want. Which was why, in the end, he had given in to it and gone to her room.
Was Ricardo saying what she thought he was saying? Carly wondered dizzily. Or was she letting her own erotic imagination run away with her?
At least Lucy and Jules would be pleased to learn she was about to abandon her virgin status. Abandon...it was such an emotive word, such a sensual word. And, recklessly, she was already eager to abandon herself to the physical pleasure of Ricardo's possession.
'Or would you prefer to make a start now?'
Carly's eyes widened as he came to within a few inches of her and bent his head toward hers, his hand resting lightly on the side of her face.
She had never been kissed like this before. There was no physical contact other than that of their lips and his fingers lightly caressing her face. His mouth moved more fiercely on hers and Carly responded instinctively, moving closer to him, leaning into him as his tongue drove deeper into the soft recesses of her mouth to take possession of it.
She started to raise her arms, wanting to hold him, but to her confusion he stopped her, gripping her shoulders and releasing her mouth to step back from her.
Whilst she looked up at him in confusion he untied the belt of her robe and then pushed it off her shoulders in one swift easy movement that left her totally naked in front of him. Her only covering was the hot wave of color that beat up under her skin. His gaze dropped to her body with the swift descent of an eagle to its prey. It stalked slowly over creamy slender shoulders, down to ripely rounded breasts, softly heavy with sensual promise, silky pale skin contrasting with the darker aureoles from which her rose nipples thrust so eagerly.
Her ribcage curved into a narrow waist, below which her hips flared out again, and her legs were, as he had already known they would be, unbelievably long and perfectly shaped. A soft cap o
f downy dark curls formed a neat little triangle just above the delicately shaped outer lips of her sex, curled protectively over it.
A dozen—no, a hundred different sensations and de sires struck him, which in the end were only one need, one desire, and that the most ancient and powerful of all male needs and desires.
His gaze was fixed on her as though her body was a visual magnet from which he could not look away.
He wanted her. He wanted her right here and right now. He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before. His own flesh was so immediately and intensely aroused that it was almost painful.
He wanted to take her quickly, fiercely, hotly plunging his flesh within hers and filling her, as though in taking her he would somehow drive out his own need for her.
And yet at the same time he wanted to savor the experience of having her, to relish it and wait for it.
Carly felt like a...a houri in front of a sultan—aware of her own nakedness before him and in some weird way actually physically excited by the fact that he was seeing her like that. Because she knew that he desired her, and his desire for her gave her power over him? The telltale bulge had now become a definite and openly defined ridge of flesh she badly wanted to reach out to and caress. Carly touched her tongue-tip to her lips.
No man had looked at her in the way Ricardo just had. With such a blazing heat of desire that she could have sworn she'd actually felt its burn against her skin.
But then no man had ever seen her like this—stripped bare, vulnerable, the whole of herself revealed.
She could feel a small, excited pulse beating inside her body.
Ricardo was picking up her Bellini and handing it to her. Uncertainly she took it from him. 'You have a beautiful body,' he told her emotionlessly. 'I'm tempted to tell you to stay like this, so that I can continue to have the pleasure of looking at it, but I'm not sure my self-control could go the distance.'
He bent down to pick up her robe and handed it to her.
When she learned forward to take it from him, he lowered his head and took one taut nipple into his mouth. Could those fierce pangs she felt deep inside her body really be caused by the fierce tugging of his mouth on her nipple? She heard herself moan and was afraid she might collapse. Her legs felt so weak. And yet when his mouth was no longer there she ached for its return, she realized, as he pulled her robe back on for her as unceremoniously and as swiftly as he had removed it.
